House Demo­crats are hardly ready to pop the cham­pagne for Health­Care.gov, the Obama­care en­roll­ment web­site whose ter­rible rol­lout sent the party in­to a full-blown pan­ic. But ten­sions eased Tues­day after White House of­fi­cials briefed them on the site’s pro­gress.

“Pri­or to the re­cess, there was deep and sig­ni­fic­ant frus­tra­tion, as there should have been. The rol­lout was a dis­aster,” said Rep. Steve Is­rael, D-N.Y., who chairs the Demo­crat­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee. “As the im­prove­ments are be­ing made and ac­cess is more suc­cess­ful and as the White House fo­cuses on the suc­cesses of the Af­ford­able Care Act, then the frus­tra­tion in the Demo­crat­ic caucus ob­vi­ously lessens.”

The White House de­clared vic­tory this past week­end on the tech­nic­al side of its re­pair ef­fort, but get­ting the site func­tion­al by Dec. 1 was largely a polit­ic­al dead­line. And the site seems to meet Demo­crats’ stand­ards for “good enough.”

“We listened to our con­stitu­ents and said to the ad­min­is­tra­tion, ‘You need to get to work in fix­ing these prob­lems. You need to make this law work for the Amer­ic­an people.’ And to the cred­it of the pres­id­ent and his team, they got to work do­ing that,” Rep. Rob An­drews, D-N.J., said.

Vul­ner­able Demo­crats have rushed over the past six weeks to dis­tance them­selves from the law, but party lead­ers said that after the re­pairs, Demo­crats may not need to fear “Obama­care” ahead of next year’s midterms.

“I don’t know about rebrand­ing. The Af­ford­able Care Act is the Af­ford­able Care Act. It doesn’t need to be rebranded,” House Minor­ity Whip Steny Hoy­er, D-Md., said. “The brand is okay. It’s the pro­cess of get­ting to the brand that hasn’t been okay.”

Wheth­er Demo­crats ac­tu­ally cam­paign on Obama­care next year re­mains to be seen — the law polls poorly, as it has since it passed. But Demo­crats at least seem to feel they have re­gained their foot­ing after stand­ing by for two months while Obama­care’s polit­ic­al im­plic­a­tions bal­looned.

“If we make pro­gress at the rate we’ve been mak­ing pro­gress over the last 30 days, I think we’re go­ing to be fine,” Hoy­er said.

Demo­crats ac­know­ledged that Health­Care.gov still needs work, es­pe­cially on back-end pro­cesses that trans­mit in­form­a­tion to in­sur­ance com­pan­ies. In­surers say the site con­tin­ues to send them in­ac­cur­ate or in­com­plete in­form­a­tion about the people who try to en­roll, and the ad­min­is­tra­tion still hasn’t built the com­puter sys­tem that will re­con­cile gaps in en­roll­ment in­form­a­tion.

Be­cause of those gaps in the sys­tem, the law’s sup­port­ers could face an­oth­er polit­ic­al head­ache over en­roll­ment er­rors: people who thought they had signed up but got lost in the chaos, for ex­ample, or who were quoted a lower premi­um than what they will ac­tu­ally have to pay.

“People are more up­beat but you want to make sure the ad­min­is­tra­tion keeps its fo­cus on fix­ing the prob­lems that re­main,” said Rep. Chris Van Hol­len, D-Md. “In some ways, we’ve turned a corner but we need to make sure that we an­ti­cip­ate fu­ture bumps and fix them be­fore they’re smack­ing you in the face.”

Still, Demo­crat­ic lead­ers said they were “pleased” with im­prove­ments in the site’s user ex­per­i­ence, and de­clared that they were back on of­fense over the Af­ford­able Care Act.

Pres­id­ent Obama is sched­uled to ad­dress the law this af­ter­noon, and the Demo­crat­ic Na­tion­al Com­mit­tee launched a new web­site, TheGOPHealth­Care­Plan.com, to high­light Re­pub­lic­ans’ fail­ure to co­alesce around a plan to re­place Obama’s health care law.

Is­rael said the White House knows it has to be more ag­gress­ive high­light­ing the law’s pop­u­lar pro­vi­sions, but could also do a bet­ter job on fo­cus­ing on the Re­pub­lic­an al­tern­at­ive, which is simply to re­peal the law.

“That will bring us back to a broken sys­tem,” Is­rael said. “So it’s good to talk about suc­cesses, but it’s also im­port­ant to talk about con­trasts.”

"President Trump signed a sweeping spending bill Friday afternoon, averting another partial government shutdown. The action came after Trump had declared a national emergency in a move designed to circumvent Congress and build additional barriers at the southern border, where he said the United States faces 'an invasion of our country.'"

Source:

REDIRECTS $8 BILLION

Trump Declares National Emergency

6 days ago

THE DETAILS

"President Donald Trump on Friday declared a state of emergency on the southern border and immediately direct $8 billion to construct or repair as many as 234 miles of a border barrier. The move — which is sure to invite vigorous legal challenges from activists and government officials — comes after Trump failed to get the $5.7 billion he was seeking from lawmakers. Instead, Trump agreed to sign a deal that included just $1.375 for border security."

Source:

COULD SOW DIVISION AMONG REPUBLICANS

House Will Condemn Emergency Declaration

6 days ago

THE DETAILS

"House Democrats are gearing up to pass a joint resolution disapproving of President Trump’s emergency declaration to build his U.S.-Mexico border wall, a move that will force Senate Republicans to vote on a contentious issue that divides their party. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said Thursday evening in an interview with The Washington Post that the House would take up the resolution in the coming days or weeks. The measure is expected to easily clear the Democratic-led House, and because it would be privileged, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would be forced to put the resolution to a vote that he could lose."

Source:

MILITARY CONSTRUCTION, DRUG FORFEITURE FUND

Where Will the Emergency Money Come From?

6 days ago

THE DETAILS

"ABC News has learned the president plans to announce on Friday his intention to spend about $8 billion on the border wall with a mix of spending from Congressional appropriations approved Thursday night, executive action and an emergency declaration. A senior White House official familiar with the plan told ABC News that $1.375 billion would come from the spending bill Congress passed Thursday; $600 million would come from the Treasury Department's drug forfeiture fund; $2.5 billion would come from the Pentagon's drug interdiction program; and through an emergency declaration: $3.5 billion from the Pentagon's military construction budget."

Source:

TRUMP SAYS HE WILL SIGN

House Passes Funding Deal

1 weeks ago

THE DETAILS

"The House passed a massive border and budget bill that would avert a shutdown and keep the government funded through the end of September. The Senate passed the measure earlier Thursday. The bill provides $1.375 billion for fences, far short of the $5.7 billion President Trump had demanded to fund steel walls. But the president says he will sign the legislation, and instead seek to fund his border wall by declaring a national emergency."